3 Simple Horse Racing Trading Strategies for Betfair

Horse Racing Trading Strategies…

Horse Racing Trading Strategies: Where Do You Start?!

Of all the trading opportunities on the exchange, horse racing holds the most. With so many races, day after day, week after week, you only need a small average return to highly successful.

But where the hell do you start?

It’s often quite daunting at first, but one things for sure: it’ll never get boring. This is why I immediately drawn to developing horse racing trading strategies.

But If I’m really honest, the huge sums of money to be made probably had more to do with it! With 15 – 40 race a day an average of just £10 per race soon adds up.

Building up a selection of horse racing trading strategies wasn’t quite so easy. While it was absolutely worth it, it did take some time (and a lot of mistakes on the way!)

This post I want to give you the short-cut to developing some horse racing trading strategies of your own. By focusing on one at a time you highly increase your chances of success… and reduce that over-whelming feeling. Mastering just one of these three is more than enough to make a stable side-income:

If you aren’t familiar, scalping is a trading technique where small profits are taken quickly and consistently.

It’s important to be on top of your own mindset when scalping, as hesitation on exit could mean several previous ‘scalps’ that were profitable are wiped out quickly.

Of all the horse racing trading strategies, this has long been my favoured approach. Consistently turning a small profit can add up fast, and doesn’t require a large bankroll or much market knowledge, it’s one of the easier skills to acquire in my opinion. Discipline and method of execution will determine how successful you are when it comes to scalping.

But it’s not always easy…

Do you find scalping frustrating? If so, the chances are you’re either:

Operating in the wrong setting

Slow to react (poor discipline)

Not executing well

Over-trading

Or all of the above. It’s likely your main problem is discipline to start (I’ve been through it too). However, with the right stake management and patience it’s completely do-able. Usually I find followers begin to struggle some more after they’ve had some success scalping.

Why?

Because once you make some money, the urge is to try and apply it to everything, every race, every situation. That just won’t work. This also leads to over-trading…

Here’s a clip of me scalping on YouTube from some time ago…

If you aren’t yet familiar with the interface in the video above, see this link.

In order to give yourself an increased chance of success you will need to find situations where the price is fairly stable, and the volume of matched bets entering the markets is as high as possible.

Depending on the size of stake you wish to use, you will need to consider the situations stability more (it can be harder to get larger stakes through quickly £500-£1,000+)

Being the simplest of horse racing trading strategies, means you can implement this strategy in pretty much any market at one point or another, although throughout the whole trading window. The key to success is picking the right time-frame. The more money there is flowing through the market the easier it is to get your bets matched.

Horse Racing Trading Strategies: 2. How To BACK TO LAY For a Quick Win

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (links on the sidebar). You’ll have seen me post up Back-to-Lay pointers from time to time.

There’s far less opportunity to use this one than scalping or swing trading. But given the right selection and execution, its seriously fast money.

Sporting Life is my preferred resource for how horses have previously run. Many others are also useful, but don’t give quite so much written history on previous performances.

Several followers have messaged me since I introduced them to it, saying how it’s the easiest of horse racing trading strategies. The only potential downside being there are maybe one or two really good opportunities a day. The upside is; returns are high when considering the stake to profit ratio when comparing to other horse racing trading strategies. Having a lower bankroll but still achieving good results makes it attractive to those just coming into the game.

…be warned it can be quite addictive! (making profit always is).

Other horse racing trading strategies are often bring lower stake-profit ratio, although there are more opportunities throughout the day.

One thing to bear in mind with the video above is that you won’t want to have a large liability at the first hurdle in jumps racing. It’s a good idea to offset your liability by this point just in case the horse falls. The best horse racing trading strategies limit your potential downside while leaving room for profit, not the other way around.

Of all the horse racing trading strategies (pre-race), this one gets people excited.

It’s easy to see why…

If you can predict a large swing in price, you have far more opportunity to win. But in order to swing trade well you’ll need the patience of a saint.

The natural tendency is to close a trade when its winning, but let it run if its losing. We’ve all been there, right?

When you read that out loud, it’s easy to see it should be quite the opposite. It’s this kind of thing that makes trading difficult, all of which have very little to do with the market. And quite a lot to do with the trader!

However, as ever, knowledge is power.

Having the knowledge to give you that extra bit of confidence in what you’re doing is all the difference. By feeling like you actually know where the price will go, it becomes so much easier to let the profits run. More importantly it’s even easier to avoid that horrible sinking feeling as it goes wrong…

Above: Swing trading just goes to show how you don’t need a huge bank to win nice amounts

Horse Racing Trading Strategies: SUMMARY

Since 2010 I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the horse racing markets, just about every day.

On route I’ve done it all, made many mistakes and found plenty sweet spots too!

I’ve always been one of those annoying ‘but why?’ people, so finding what works and why that is hasn’t been too hard. For just about everyone the hard bit is avoiding making the same mistakes.

These markets are different to other on Betfair.

Although they may not be as scalable for some horse racing trading strategies, the amount of opportunity on offer is massive! Even now I’m still finding points of interest to adapt and evolve on.

I’m sure the above will be enough to get most traders thinking, old or new. If you already knew what’s been outlined, how could you improve on it?

Over the years I’ve learnt that if I have a reasonable edge, there are usually half a dozen other ideas that can come from it… some of the best have been stumbled upon while looking for something else!

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29 thoughts on “3 Simple Horse Racing Trading Strategies for Betfair”

Nice post. It seems that are a lot of similarities to tennis trading. Since I started to scalp I am on the winning path. Obviously we also have swings at tennis and back to lay (or the opposite) is also a way to make profit. It seems that the biggest advantage of the horses are the high amount of races, you can trade. At tennis I don’t see more than 4-5 opportunities a day. You have to wait for the right moment, some games are not tradeable (for example most first round matches, where a big favourite like Federer or Djokovic is involved).

Keep up the good work. It’s very interesting to read your blog. Perhaps you can put my blog at your link list. Your one is already at my blog roll.

I have immersed myself in the racing markets over the past 6 months. After many ups and downs I do feel that it’s beginning to click into place. I’m starting to get a lot more consistent with my swing trades, and scalping is getting there (although I have focused primarily on swings). Thanks for all ur content. It has definitely helped me improve. Cheers pal

Hi Caan,
Am trying to purchase your Trading Guide by debit card but the “pay now” button seems to be “greyed out” so nothing is happening when I try to process the payment???
Can you help?
Cheers
Kevin

Might be boring as you say but let’s look at that.
2 mins to 15 mins of work, and you can trade out on a profit of £20 before the race starts.
Do that 10 times a day, that is £200 a day tax free…
That’s a cool £5200 a month if you do it on weekdays and on Saturdays.
Yep that sounds boring…
Brill stuff Caan.

Downside is as you say, care must be taken but as long as you are okay with a few losses each month – attitude to risk that is means you don’t mind – as you profit anyway, this works. You will make mistakes especially if you go inplay a lot to go for better odds. I do it as a secondary income on top of my usual day job as a freelancer. I use Bet Angel, perfect for this method.

Oh yes, I agree. I get days when staring at stats on sites and bet angel so long numbs my brain. I tend to keep the time consumed under control partly as I run my own business too. Lots of sites are making scalping out to be easy and I want to add that on the surface, yes mostly but readers should not think ‘easy money’. That kind of approach brings easy losses. Newcomers here should take scalping carefully, and keep updated via your site and some others.

Hi Caan,
im quite new to this but 100% serious about getting up and running. I was wondering if you could provide some one2one (online) assistance for me if i were to pay for the service.
Is this something you’d be willing to consider or not?

I’m 80 years of age so watching the ‘Scalping’ video lost me completely.
Betting odds I understand, this stuff.. no!
My first bet was in a factory. A guy had a timed bag to take to the bookie. 1959.
First bet – 3 sixpenny doubles and a sixpenny treble. Had a 7/1 and a 7/2 double up – never looked back. High street bookies took me to the cleaners. 🙂

Hay Caan, Great post and I’m learning a lot. I went and dabble the scalp method and i entered £5 stake @6.6 and exit at 6.2. All happened before the race, but after checking my Betfair statement, I haven’t won or lost at all. Is it because my stake was too low?

If you see the scalping Betfair post linked earlier in the article you’ll see that it’s best to use software (it’ll do the calculations for you). That way you can hedge up quickly. By backing and laying the same values at different prices you’d have only been left with a profit for the race if your selection won. And no loss on the other runners. Good luck with your scalping!

Hi Caan, great post, really informative. I do back and lay trading. I back the night before on a horse whose odds look very good value and lay out generally about 20 minutes before the off. The scalping I’ve found a bit confusing. Does anyone else do this back and lay strategy?

I do it this way as well, either the night before or get up early in the morning. After 9 O’clock it is no good as the value has gone and the market is settling down. Being a woman I don’t think I have the required nerve to trade 10 mins before the off, as it doesn’t give you much time to correct your mistakes. I’m going to give it a try though, and thanks to Caan I am learning more

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